Third Day of Light, 61st of Summer, 525 M.E. (Castor): We jazz fans can be difficult. We're suspicious and judgmental by nature. Not because of some intrinsic aspect of our personalities, but because we've all been burned when someone tells us that they like jazz, too, only to have them continue by telling us their favorite artist is Herb Albert. After that, when someone confides to us that they're a jazz fan, we automatically assume they're not really and we start skeptically quizzing them on specifics and artists and albums. 

Chuck Mangione was the epitome of the faux-jazz musician in the 70s. His Feels So Good, a shmaltzy pop instrumental, was a megahit in 1977, and so many people hopped aboard the "jazz" bandwagon but listened to only that one album, or even that one song, and would run out of the room screaming if someone played Anthony Braxton, On the Corner, or late-era Coltrane. 

I hated Chuck Mangione and I hated his music and I resented that I had to constantly argue to ignorant people that no, that's not jazz. At least, not what I mean by jazz. Today, Kenny G is Mangione's cultural successor and basically occupies his karmic space now. 

Chuck Mangione died this week, and while I feel sympathy for him and his family and loved ones, I really couldn't care otherwise. An annoying musician I didn't like isn't going to annoy me anymore.

I never liked Hulk Hogan either, and now he's dead, too. In the early 80s, I found pro wrestling campy and comical and secretly enjoyed watching wrestling Saturday afternoons on TBS, a low-brow forbidden pleasure. But when Hogan emerged on the scene, everything became big and commercial, and wrestling went from free, non-primetime television to glitzy pay-per-view events. I man, I was never that big a wrestling fan in the first place - it was just something quirky I found amusing to watch, sort of like Bollywood musical videos - but to me, Hogan was the one who ruined its charm. And then he went all racist and then he went MAGA.  And now he's dead and I don't care.

I already mentioned Ozzy Osborne the other day - never like him or Black Sabbath. The very first concert I walked out on was Sabbath back in 1973. And now he joins Chuck Mangione and Hulk Hogan in impermanence and I can't find it in myself to grieve over any of them.  

Old man yells at cloud (today's my 71st birthday). Impermanence is swift.